French and US high school language instruction (was: Re: Optimum number of symbols)

Christophe wrote:

Kendra wrote:

>> I wish my teacher corrected pronunciaton. There're
>>people in my class STILL saying "ill est trace bow," and
>>it makes it hard for me to have any clue.
>
>
>I'm under the impression that it's one of the consequences
>of the view of Americans towards foreign languages: "they
>will speak English to us anyway, so why bother learning
>their languages?" At least I thought teachers would fight
>this point of view, but I see it's not the case :(( .

Unfortunately, in my experience the teachers often *want*
to fight this point of view but realize it is worse than
futile -- I knew of many teachers of foreign languages in
high school who purposely made their classes as easy as
possible, even if it sacrificed fluency, because if
students thought the courses were too difficult they would
simply stop taking them (as they are seldom required) and
then eventually when student interest was low enough no
classes would be offered anymore.  Also, even when the
teachers do attempt to fight practices like the one Kendra
cites (oh so prevalent this one, I might add) a lot of
students simply disregard any pronunciation corrections
because they couldn't care less about really learning the
language and figure everyone understands English anyway
(not true, even as near to the US as Quebec, but for some
reason Americans rarely seem to grasp this).  Sorry for the
somewhat-rant, but seven years of middle school & high
school French plus four of German have left their mark on
me...

nicole, hereby proving that Kendra is not the only female
on the list but agreeing that there are *way* more guys

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